5/31/2006

To Republicans in the House - Welcome to the Party, Bitches:It's always sad to see a prison bitch attempt to stand up for himself. After months, years, even, of being forced to wear women's clothes, passed around from inmate to inmate, whored out for drugs, cigs, and little bits of cash by his "Daddy" or "Husband" or "Owner," having to deal with the different needs of the different cons who fuck him - whether it's the Latin King who beats the shit out of him after blowing a load on his face because the cholo can't stand the Catholic guilt of liking the cocksucking or the Crip who makes the bitch tape his dick between his legs so the Crip can pretend he's just fuckin' the ass of his girl on the outside or the Aryan Brotherhood guys who like to make fuck him two, three, five at a time, high-fivin' as they pretend they're not really fuckin' each other. Yeah, there comes a pathetic moment for every prison bitch where he thinks his time has come and he's gonna use that shiv he's been sharpenin' for weeks on his husband, sick and tired of being a wife, of making beds and cleaning johns and getting fucked again and again, washing blood, semen, and piss out of clothes and sheets. He's gonna try, this "girl," this fuck toy, to take a stand, and the really, sad, shake-your-head part is that after he pulls that shiv, unless he's willing to go all the way and stab that fucker who's been pimpin' him, stab him so crazy that he can dance with the entrails he pulls out, all it's gonna mean is more raping, more beating, and probably, sadly, finally, being offed by some implement or other being shoved up his ass.

So when James Sensenbrenner, the Republican Representative for the fine white suburbs and farmlands of Wisconsin's Fifth District, dares to stand up to the White House with his little show hearing about the FBI raid on William Jefferson's office, one can only smirk and think, "Goddamn, you fat wad of fuck, did they finally fuck you so hard in the sphincter that you coughed up Karl Rove's cum?" And then one follows that thought with, "The only thing better than fucking a prison bitch who fights back is fucking one who's been slapped down."

'Cause mostly for the last five years, Sensenbrenner's been a good bitch to the White House, eagerly cock gobbling whatever raping of civil rights, the environment, or human rights he was given. Hell, everyone has fond memories of Sensenbrenner's respect of his colleagues and the rules of the House of Representatives when, as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, he took his gavel and went home at a Patriot Act Reauthorization hearing where the Democrats dared to say that his husband was violating the nation.

Now, here's Sensenbrenner, who's let the White House tear through Congress and the separation of powers with all the force of a rhino fucking a chihuahua, sounding like Elmer Fudd speaking out against plugging guns with carrots: "A constitutional question is raised when communications between Members of Congress and their constituents – documents having nothing to do with any crime – are seized by the Executive Branch without constitutional authority. This seizure occurred without so much as lawyers or representatives of Congress being allowed to simply observe the search and how it was conducted." Aww, fuck, ain't that cute? Watching James Sensebrenner and other Republicans take a stand for rights, the Constitution, and the rule of law is a little like watching a Penn State fraternity take a stand against underage drinking and date rape.

What was the straw that finally broke the hippo's back? The Jefferson raid? Sweet merciful fuck, Sensenbrenner was all about the separation and balance of powers back in the day when he was trying Bill Clinton: "The framers of the Constitution devised an elaborate system of checks and balances to insure our liberties by making sure that no person, institution, or branch of government became so powerful that a tyranny could ever be established in the United States of America." Now this porcine piece of shit is only giving a happy monkey fuck because the Bush administration extended its disdain for Congress into Sensenbrenner's home. Ain't it pathetic to see the last house standing in the midst of a conflagration where the owner is using his garden hose to keep it all from burning down?

'Course, at the end of the day, most prison bitches put away the shiv, hide it in the mattress, or behind the brick, and go on receiving the fucking, behaving graciously that at least his husband is protecting him from real harm, you know. So Sensenbrenner ended his opening remarks at his "Reckless Justice" hearing by praising the President for the 45-day period of sealing the documents seized from Jefferson's office, saying, "The President has allowed for precisely the sort of reasoned deliberation on important issues of separation of powers I expect this hearing to accord with today." Yeah, now come on back to Daddy and drop your panties. It's lights out on the block.

5/30/2006

Republican Moral Equivalence: How a Flea Is Like an Elephant:Ahh, the sweet bliss of false moral equivalence, so soothing, so conscience-easing. Like the young teenage boy who comes home from a party at 7 in the morning, covered in shit and jism, pulse speedballing around his body like a fly trapped between window and screen, and when Dad dares to say that perhaps a 14 year-old shouldn't be sucking dicks while shooting up with the coke/smack cocktail, the boy pulls out that trump card, man, the one he's been saving in his back pocket for that time dear ol' Dad questions his morality and behavior: "Fuck you, Dad. You told me you smoked dope when you were a kid." See, the teenager is counting on the guilt of moral equivalence absolving him, cleansing him.

If Dad's a moral relativist, which the kid's counting on, Dad'll crumble like a house of cards, thinking, "Oh, fuck me, the boy's right, even though I sat around a living room and toked up with friends before falling asleep on a couch." That's Pussy Dad. Pussy Dad says that perhaps we all need to be better people in general. Pussy Dad may even feel a twinge of regret at all the shit his son gets to do and get away with. Pussy Dad has fallen into the bullshit trap of moral equivalence, where greater evil is ameliorated by the invocation of lesser evil.

For instance, the desperate, craven efforts by the Republicans and their lackeys in the right wing press to find anything, any goddamn thing, to make sure that Democrats look as corrupt as Republicans. So we get the bizarro, does-any-real-person-give-a-fuck article that says Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid got free tickets to three boxing matches in Nevada. And we get the gleeful piling on Rep. William Jefferson, who likes his cash cold, by everyone in the media. Or the pathetic attempts to tie any Democrat, in any way, shape, form, or thread, to Jack Abramoff, even if it means just lying about it. Because, you know, we wouldn't wanna say that one party has become rank with "decay" and "failure," full of "traitors" who are "shallow, pathetic, corrupt, imcompetent, and sick," as a training tape for Newt Gingrich's GOPAC instructed Republicans to talk about Democrats back in 1994.

Republicans have to cling to moral equivalency, and hope that Pussy Dad shows up, because comparing Harry Reid and William Jefferson to, let's say, Tom DeLay and Duke Cunningham, with Bob Ney and others pulling up the rear, is like saying that unsolicitedly squeezing a nice ass in a bar is the same thing as engineering and participating in the gang rape of abducted illegal immigrant children. It's like saying a shoulder punch is the same as getting kicked in the nuts repeatedly. It's like saying that a paper cut is the same thing as a sliced jugular. It's like saying that X equals Y, even if X is a flea and Y is, well, an elephant. At worst, Reid had an ethical fart. At worst, Jefferson is a greedy motherfucker acting alone. Remember: they're not even part of the majority in Congress. DeLay and Cunningham represent a systemic sickness, a malignant tumor of graft and power madness that revealed itself in bill after bill, vote after vote.

But the lie of moral equivalence is all they have. Look at George W. Bush yesterday at Arlington National Cemetery. He spoke of the dead Americans from Iraq buried there, and veterans from the war gathered with "veterans of World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and other conflicts across the globe, whose friends and comrades also lie in this sacred ground." Bush has to make sure that World War II (or the American Revolution or whatever "good war" he needs at the moment) is invoked to make his massively fucked up adventure in Iraq mean so much more than it actually does. No, Bush is wrong when he said, "All who are buried here understood their duty. They saw a dark shadow on the horizon, and went to meet it. They understood that tyranny must be met with resolve, and that liberty is always the achievement of courage." Leaving aside those who were drafted didn't exactly go "to meet" the dark shadows because it was their duty, all the dead are not alike, except in that they are dead.

For to compare the useless dead of Vietnam and Iraq to those who died in an actual, real battle against tyranny in World War II is to desecrate the graves of both. Bush may as well have taken two skeletons and held them as puppets said, "Here's a guy who killed him some Nazis; here's a guy who killed him some gooks. Don't they look alike? When I jiggle 'em, don't they just rattle so pretty? Hey, Nazi-killer, say 'Hi' to Gook-killer while I drink this glass of water." They both fought, they both died - which one would you have die for you still?

The question remains, of course, whether or not Democrats are gonna be Pussy Dad or Righteous Dad to that fucked-up teenager. 'Cause Righteous Dad, when confronted with a bullshit moral equivalence argument, would look at the teenager and say, "Yeah, right. You're grounded, and your Xbox belongs to the Salvation Army. Now, spooge-covered or not, mow the fuckin' lawn."

5/29/2006

Right Wing Blogs Hate Our Troops:It needs to be said, and, on this, our fourth Memorial Day with soldiers in Iraq (and the increasingly fucked up Afghanistan), there's no better time: all the good and loyal writers over the borderline in Right Blogsylvania hate the troops of the United States. It is the only logical conclusion, if you believe that the war is a mistake of such gigantic proportion that one day underground monuments will be built as a way of burying the disgrace brought on this nation by those who planned and encouraged this debacle. Yeah, it'll be like an iceberg, with just the top of it visible aboveground where the individual dead soldiers can be listed, but below will be the largest part, to represent the magnitude of the treachery done to America by its "leaders." When do we reach the tipping point where support of the Iraq War simply means you wish death upon more and more American soldiers? Or are we already there?

So, when Michelle Malkin makes her solemn tribute to war dead, saying "Freedom is not free," she could just as well say, "I don't care who dies so my verson of imposed 'liberty' can be shoved into any place I decide needs it."

Or when the wee lads over at Powerline post a heartwarming letter offering books to a Minnesota National Guard troop stationed in Iraq, the boys may as well add, "If you don't get killed to assure that our manic vision of democracy is enforced, but if you do, well, at least you had some fine reading material in your last days. Thanks for your one weekend a month and two weeks a year."

So it goes, at yer Captain's Quarters, and all the rest. Tributes subtle and obvious, all caluculated to say that they care. When they don't. All they care about is proving that their lost cause is not a lost cause. No matter if it's 2400 dead, 24,000, or 240,000. So much more fodder for their Memorial Day posts for 2007, 2008...

5/26/2006

Al Gore - Fuck Yeah:The Rude Pundit had one question for Al Gore last night when the former Vice President spoke and took part in a panel on his film, An Inconvenient Truth, at the Town Hall in New York City. The audience was asked to scribble its questions, to Gore, calmly horrifying climate scientist James Hansen, producer/cheerleader Laurie David, and just plain creepy producer Lawrence Bender, on cards provided to us. The Rude Pundit scrawled a simply, brief query that Gore wasn't asked by host John Hockenberry, but he knows that Gore has the question, because Hockenberry handed Gore a stack of like-minded ones. The question was this: "Why wouldn't you run for President in 2008?"

Al Gore is our Coriolanus, one of those Shakespeare characters that doesn't get as much attention as your fancy Hamlet or crazy MacBeth. See, Coriolanus was a hero to the Romans, celebrated by the patricians as a warrior, but he couldn't take his place as a leader because he couldn't connect to the plebians of Rome and get them to vote for him. This is not to mention the backstabbing and lies told by those out to sink him. Sent into exile, Coriolanus, humbled, chastened, goes to his former enemies for help. He leads that army into battle and kicks Rome's ass, making it beg for mercy, and becomes a hero to his new home nation.

Last night, Gore was as you've heard, loose, funny, and smart. Goddamn, so fuckin' smart. Every time he opened his mouth to discuss some aspect of melting ice caps or fuel efficiency, you just wanted to weep, thinking, "Jesus Christ, he won. Motherfucker won. He should be our president right now, not that inarticulate, shit-tossing baboon hunched in the ditch next to Tony Blair right now." What Gore does better than anyone in the Democratic Party right now, from Hillary Clinton to Russ Feingold, is articulate liberal issues as moral callings. Not squishy, feel-good sentiments, but deep in the soul, religious, even, moral purposes. Like, you know, Christians are supposed to do.

Essentially, Gore's mission on global warming is rhetorically similar to George Bush's mission in Iraq: revolution now so that the future can be secure. The difference, of course, is that Gore isn't a liar, and he doesn't have to hype the evidence. Gore approaches his subject the way every politician ought to lead: he knows he's right, and he's so right that others are wrong. When Gore was asked about scientists who say that climatic change is just part of ongoing natural cycles, Gore didn't pander, didn't offer that idiotic "well, good people can have differences of opinion" bullshit the Bush administration uses to paper over their lies. No, Gore just said that the questioner was wrong. That the vast scientific consensus says global warming is real and happening. And to believe otherwise is to believe liars. He said scientists who say otherwise are industrial "prostitutes" and "camp followers" (he hesitated before saying that - you knew he wanted to say "whores" or "skanky, disease-ridden bitches").

Gore was often spanked in the press for sounding smart and right about everything. But if you have a problem with someone calling out motherfuckers for fucking their mothers, then perhaps you need to take another look at who's in your bed. You look at Gore now and you can't help but think that perhaps we've moved past the Forrest Gump-ish wisdom of the stupid phase and want the cold comfort of a poindexter telling us what's real. It's been said, and it's true, that Gore is liberated now. He was marginalized and now he's moving back to the center of the national discourse.

The Rude Pundit's not gonna sit here and do reportage on much of the evening. It was, mostly, a recapitulation of the film's ideas, with Hansen there to add gravitas and authority and to scare the shit out of us in the way that global warming is more frightening and more likely than attacks by a hundred bin Ladens. The only thing new was that Gore praised Hillary Clinton's talk on ethanol (Chelsea was in the house). But, to return to the Rude Pundit's question for Gore, a kind of "What do you have to lose" by running for Prez, Hockenberry posed it this way: "What do you say to people who think you are more interested in Powerpoint than in political power?"

Gore joked (earlier he had called politicians "a renewable resource"), and he said he had "no intention" to run for President. Then he turned it around, speaking quietly, which, whenever he does, it's time to listen. He made a statement about the power of the people, of James Madison's "informed electorate," and about the responsibility of citizens to be active participants in the destiny of the nation. For Gore, running for President would give him the wide national platform to even discuss these issues. But more important to him is a politics of engagement, whether in power or not.

And perhaps he's right. For things did not end well for Coriolanus. See, Coriolanus didn't destroy Rome. He made peace, and that pissed off the leader of his new nation, so he had Coriolanus assassinated at his moment of greatest glory. And, god, what blood is spilled along the way.

5/25/2006

Top Fifty "Conservative" "Rock" Songs: An Effort in Mass Delusion:Now the Rude Pundit's pretty sure that the lyrics to the song "Sweet Home Alabama," by proud Confederate flag wavers, when not going down screaming on a crashing plane, Lynyrd Skynyrd, contains these lines: "In Birmingham they love the governor" and "The governor's true." See, problem is that the governor of Alabama at the time the song came out, in 1973, was George Wallace, elected in 1970, well before the vile segregationist became born again and repudiated his doorway-blocking past. Of course, his major accomplishment around that time was learning to piss from a wheelchair. Still, the song's reference to Wallace and the baggage of the band's symbolism don't matter to the desperate-for-relevance tools at the National Review and their list of the top 50 "conservative" "rock" songs, an effort so pathetic and craven that it is easily one of the stupidest things ever. Ever.

Check out Michael Long, spinning like a member of Congress caught with three dead Thai child hookers, a brick of Peruvian blow, a machete, and bundles of hundreds, justifying the view of the South in "Sweet Home Alabama," the number 4 song on hell's countdown: "Things aren’t perfect here or anywhere else, they seem to say, but we’ve been known to pick a song or two, we have ourselves some blue skies, and the road will always carry me home to see my kin. We have secrets and shames, but so do you, so don’t dare preach to me. That’s far beyond a singularly southern sentiment. That’s what every free man ought to say." Unless, of course, you're a black student trying to attend the University of Alabama. Of course, considering the National Review's opposition to the civil rights movement back in the day, perhaps it's not so surprising a choice.

The entire list - fuck, the entire effort - is sad and embarassing, like watching Grandpa do the Macarena now, thinking that he's still hip, that he's been hip for the last 30 years. Because to come up with fifty songs, the readers and editors of the National Review had to neglect, almost entirely, the politics and lifestyles of nearly every single one of the music acts on the list, like, say U2, the Clash, and the Sex Pistols, just for kicks, or noted cross-dressing androgyne David Bowie. They had to twist the meaning of lyrics so that vague references to "freedom" all of a sudden became calls to a modified libertarianism (you know, no taxes, but also no fucking). And, of course, the mention of every fucking song they could find that seems to oppose abortion or alludes to the fall of Communism or doesn't like taxes. This leads them to have to include the Scorpions, Kid Rock, Rush, Creed, After the Fire, Sammy Hagar, and Jesus Jones in a great huge pile of suck.

For, truly, what madness does it take for a magazine that not only supported the Vietnam War, but viciously attacked the anti-war movement, to include Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Who'll Stop the Rain?" as the 35th best conservative rock song? And then justify it by saying that it "takes a dim view of Communism and liberalism" in the line, "Five Year Plans and New Deals, wrapped in golden chains." Does it even matter to say that the point of the song is, would somebody, fucking anyone, make the insanity of the war end?

Of course not. It's best just to point and laugh at how simple-minded and, yes, again, pathetic the whole effort is, like when Ronald Reagan played Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA" on campaign stops (hell, at least the National Review didn't include that). And enjoy the mad manipulations: The Pretenders' "My City Was Gone" (#13) is really about "a conservative’s dissatisfaction with rapid change." The Georgia Satellites' "Keep Your Hands To Yourself" (#32), which seems to the Rude Pundit to be about the deep desire to fuck a girl, actually seeks to "affirm old-time sexual mores." The Crickets' "I Fought the Law" (#15) ain't about rebellion against authority, oh, no - it's a "law and order classic." And let's not even get into the myriad sins, misinterpretations, and outright delusions in putting the Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again" as the #1 conservative rock song.

It all starts to seem like the soundtrack to the lamest orgy ever at, say, the Dartmouth College Republicans annual retreat, where Muffy blows Drake as Scott Stapp growls out "One" on the stereo, high-fiving Blaine, who's getting blown by Jessica, when "I Can't Drive 55" comes on, screaming in orgasmic delight when they blow their loads on "The Trees" by Rush, crying and holding each other on Ben Folds' "Brick," and then promising to marry each other for one more scrotum tongue scrubbing, smiling that they're not breaking any hymen as "Wouldn't It Be Nice" by the Beach Boys plays on and on.

Right now, for the American right, an earthquake is rumbling, and the ground below is about to tear open and swallow them whole, crushing the entire movement into a viscous goo that'll poison the ground when it closes, but at least the planet won't heave them forth again. And in the midst of this earthquake, in their house, conservatives are scrambling around, wondering what they can save, what they can keep before the whole structure collapses. Sure, sure, they can grab the scrapbooks, the laptop, the dog. And while they may take those things with them into the crumbled ruins of their city, it's nice to know they'd pause to take the iPod so they can rock, dancing dementedly, grotesquely, into the dust-filled darkness of their own unending night.

5/24/2006

Cheney Speaks, Jesus Pukes:Now, the Rude Pundit ain't no Jesus worshipper unless it's a little Lord on a small cross dangling between the tits of a sneering lassie pumping the casks behind the bar at the Dice in Dublin. Then, oh, praise his name, how the Rude Pundit wanted to kiss Christ's feet and offer thanks be to God for his offerings. But even the Rude Pundit knows when the rank hypocrisy of those who would name themselves "Christian" is so overt that not only does Jesus weep, he vomits copious, hummus-filled puke onto those who would invoke his name for such purposes. And then he shits on their heads because, well, even up on a cross, nails in his flesh, a man's still gotta take a dump.

So it was at a Stockton, California fundraiser for odious corporate teat-sucker Rep. Richard Pombo's re-election bid, attended by the slithering visage of the globule of evil that forms itself into a vaguely human form every now and again that is Dick Cheney, that Jesus released his guts and bowels. For not only was it an event for the chairman of the House Resources Committee, who has sought to open up national parks and coastal areas for a right-proper reaming by mining and oil interests, as well as gutting the Endangered Species Act, not to mention his various and sundry ethical lapses (or, in the real world, possible "crimes"); not only did Dick Cheney appear, which is reason enough for the earth to rumble open to drag back to its center one of its own. No, no, that wasn't enough.

Instead, there's this: at the event, a $500 a head gathering ($2100 for a picture with Cheney, although most people who got the photos wondered why only Cheney's bodiless suit stood next to them), Pastor Brent Randall Regnart, the children's pastor, no less, for the Christian Life Center of Stockton, in his invocation for the event, said, "Lord, tonight's all about raising money." Around the Bob Hope Theatre, the onlookers wondered what that retching sound was, and, truly, it was Jesus. Regnart then asked Jesus to bless Bush, Cheney, and Pombo, as well as everyone who could afford to be present for the event. It was followed by the sound of screaming dry heaves and someone in Aramaic asking for toilet paper. The voice was, of course, ignored.

The Christian Life Center's mission appears to be making the flock as bugfuck paranoid as possible. "We are living in unprecedented times, when the powers of darkness have converged upon the church to choke the very life out of God’s people," says the Pastor's Page (the real pastor, not the kiddie pastor). "In ancient times, the gates of the city were where the elders went to do business. Jesus explicitly stated that hell's business would not succeed against this great blood-bought church." But using Jesus to encourage rich people to give money for more rich people to wreck the earth? Hey, why not. And, of course, such fearmongering among the faithful is right in line with Cheney's purpose on earth.

Cheney told the crowd to be very afraid of Democrats, for those who want "a sudden withdrawal from Iraq are counseling the very kind of retreat that Osama bin Laden has been predicting and counting on." However, the audience was not buying it. And here's the grace note in this whole night of depraved backslapping and holy political fundraising. Despite the shouts of approval for the "upbeat" economic news Cheney ticked off, the Los Angeles Times says that Cheney's "lengthy defense of the war in Iraq, his insistence that 'we are on the offensive' and 'have a clear plan for victory,' was met with nearly complete silence." Which, if you think about it, at a fundraiser, is pretty damned extraordinary.

And, just for a moment, Jesus was able to catch his breath, his stomach churning slightly less, girding for the next wave of nausea.

Sayid or Aziz? Who Can Tell?:Hey, Media Matters or Crooks and Liars, someone's gotta have the Tivo of this: on CNN's American Morning, around 6:40 (the Rude Pundit thinks), when Soledad's caffeine's kicked in and she smilin' that MILF smile just for you, Miles gave a brief mention of former foreign minister Tariq Aziz testifying at the "trial" of Saddam Hussein. Problem was, the video CNN showed, with words like "Aziz To Testify" under it, was of the Iraqi character of Sayid on ABC's Lost, pointing a gun at a white island dweller and looking all sweaty and nervous.

Problem is, of course, there was no teaser or mention of anything about Lost in the rest of the hour, at least. Symbolism? Confusion? Racism?

5/23/2006

Tommy Franks Is a Punk Ass Bitch and Other Things That Free Speech Allows Us To Say:Didja see that in the title? "Tommy Franks is a punk ass bitch." He is a prison whore, traded around from diseased inmate to diseased inmate for cigarettes and porn, a fleshy face to be fucked repeatedly by those who own him thanks to penitentiary capitalism, and the worst fucking part is that he embraces his sexual slavery, giggling and moaning happily as he hungrily laps more prisoner cock than any other skirt-wearing man-cunt in the joint.

Didja notice that paragraph there? Didja see how it totally ignores anything about retired General Tommy Franks's past, however much of a bad motherfucker he might've been on a battlefield (or, to paraphrase Stephen Colbert, however much he may have stood on a bank of computers and ordered men into battle)? 'Cause right now, as the Rude Pundit is writing this, he doesn't give a happy monkey fuck about anything that Tommy Franks said or did in the past, even his calling Douglas Feith "the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth." That's cause the Rude Pundit's free to ignore all of that and just call out Franks for his idiotic speech made to the yahoos and idiots of the National Rifle Association (motto: "Our guns aren't penis substitutes, but wouldn't you like to touch my Uzi?") at their idiots' night out (or "Members' Banquet," a name that has its own phallic implications) in Milwaukee Saturday night, the climax of the NRA's three-day convention, or, in the real world, Nutzoidfest 2006.

See, Franks, in a display of freedom to be an illogical, deluded, combat-crazed shit flinger, recalled thinking, when an "idiot" reporter asked him whether a "liberated" Iraq and Afghanistan was worth 2000 lives, "Do you not understand what we’re talking about? It’s neither 2,400, 24,000 or 240,000 [lives]. Terrorism is a thing that threatens our lives. It doesn’t have anything to do with politics." See, Franks said, NRA members "get it;" whereas, one presumes, nearly three quarters of the nation does not. You "get it" if you don't give a goddamn over how many people die on the way to your El Dorado, even if you can't define what that city of gold looks like. Of course, according to Franks, the way you know if you are someone who "gets it" is that you are someone who "knows the difference between a semi-automatic and an assault gun." Then he took out a life-sized latex and silicone doll of Donald Rumsfeld and said, "Lemme show you what I like to do whenever I visit the Secretary" before he performed astonishing acts of oral gratification on the artificial cock of the silent, cold, stiff doll, much like blowing Rumsfeld must actually be like.

And the Rude Pundit can say all these things. He can say that John McCain is a gimpy opportunist who used a captive audience to make a presidential campaign speech. Remember: those students at the graduation at the New School had one choice - go to their graduation or skip it. And once they were there, they had another choice: be silent and suck it up or use that freedom of speech and expression they were told exists in this world.

Last year, in a little-noted incident, the Rude Pundit attended a graduation where the author, and noted fucker of many, Erica Jong spoke. It had been an overlong ceremony where too many politicians wanted to get in their canned lines, where even the Buddhist monk who offered the benediction went on way, way too long. So when Jong gave the commencement address to this politically mixed, but very working class, crowd, and then started to attack the Bush administration's war policies, and then kept talking for about twice as long as she should have, the audience broke. She was booed, shouted at, told to "Go home" and "Shut up." Some around the Rude Pundit were incensed at the alleged impropriety of the students (and their parents). The Rude Pundit smiled at their actions, even if the speaker was a lefty, as he thought, "Aaah, democracy at last." Right wing websites that picked up on the story were delighted by Jong's treatment. They felt that it was improper for Jong to invoke body bags and Tom Cruise in a graduation speech. Goddamn, if nothing else, however good or bad the speech was, Jong got the students to not simply be complacent vessels.

See, we've been conditioned that politeness means we just have to sit there and take it and not do anything about what the person on the podium is saying. But we're also used to being able to click the channel, change the station, and move on to things that are more pleasing to us. It's all so controlled, from free speech zones to screening people to get in to see their own President at an allegedly public event. One of the effects of all this control is that now, when given the opportunity to dissent, that bottled up dissent, which has no outlet in the mainstream media or at most public gatherings, is going to pop like a shaken soda bottle.

And with McCain and Condoleezza Rice's commencement speeches at ostensibly liberal schools (or at least schools with a higher ratio of liberals than they're used to confronting), dissenters were handed a fuckin' silver platter with an opportunity on it. At least Rice didn't explicitly mention Iraq; instead, she did offer the Boston College crowd the broader administration line on how everyone wants them a heapin' helpin' o' freedom, as well as lots of nice stories. All in all, a pretty typical graduation speech, and she was met with polite, silent protest. McCain, though, gave a stump speech, justifying his vote on the Iraq War, "Should we lose this war, our defeat will further destabilize an already volatile and dangerous region, strengthen the threat of terrorism, and unleash furies that will assail us for a very long time. I believe the benefits of success will justify the costs and risks we have incurred." And then he invited those who disagreed to dissent. He just wasn't expecting them to dissent right there in front of him. Angrily. Telling him to shut the fuck up and stop talking about how right he thought he was. And you don't get a pass just because you spent a bunch of time in the Hanoi Hilton.

That's free speech, both McCain's campaigning and the students' heckling, as well as Stephen Colbert's moment of sitting on George W. Bush's face and farting loudly. It is messy, it is beautiful, it is rude. And those who would ask us all to put on sailor suits and frilly dresses and behave like good little boys and girls, well, they're free to say that, too, just as the Rude Pundit is free to say that Condi Rice is a slaggy meat puppet for the slave masters of global domination.

5/22/2006

Fucked New Orleans (An Ongoing Series):Maybe now they'll let Ray Nagin in through the front door of the White House. Upon winning re-election to the demi-city of New Orleans, Nagin said of President Bush, "You and I have probably been the most vilified politicians in the country. But I want to thank you for moving that promise you made in Jackson Square forward." After listing all the money that's mostly going to contractors and sub-contractors and sub-sub-contractors and illegal immigrants, Nagin continued, "You are delivering on your promise, and I want to thank you for all of the citizens of the city of New Orleans." Yes, Karl Rove must have been mighty pleased to watch Nagin's gleaming bald Super-chrome-dome bouncing light around the room as the Mayor bobbed on Bush's crank. Nagin learned, Rove realized, the price that must be paid in order to receive the good graces of the President's effulgence.

Of course, electing a new mayor of New Orleans at this point is pretty much the same as forming a unity government in Iraq: it's nice to see the processes going on, but, really, and, c'mon, what's the difference? Baghdad's gonna go up in flames, New Orleans is destined for the drink. It's not blind, nihilistic pessimism to say so.

And that's because New Orleans is fucked, yes, it's true, and there must come a time when we accept exactly how fucked it is so that we can figure out what the hell to do with the people there and scattered to the winds. The city's become a sad fat feather queen who, bent over over Abita beer boxes in an alley off Iberville Street, lets pathetic drunks fuck him with their half-erect cocks just so he can feel like he's loved. Goddamn, you think, just stop. It's embarassing to humanity in general.

New Orleans is fucked because the levees are fucked and will continue to be fucked. The levees are fucked because everyone involved in building and maintaining the levees fucked them up. A report by an independent levee engineering team, released last week, says of the failure of the levees, "This unacceptable performance can in many cases be traced to engineering lapses, poor judgments and efforts to reduce costs at the expense of system reliability...It will not be feasible to provide an assured level of protection for this large metropolitan region without first making significant changes in the organizational structure and interactions of the national and local governmental bodies and agencies jointly responsible for this effort."

One of the engineers involved in the study said on CNN this morning that the levees are fucked because the Army Corps of Engineers, to save money, drove cheap pilings for the levee into the soft earth only 17.5 feet. Says Robert Bea of UC-Berkeley, it needed to be 60 feet deep. Which it is now for 800 feet of the more than 20 miles of canal levees. Oh, and instead of sturdy, costlier clay, they used easily dispersed soil. Essentially, for its history, the governments and corporations involved were little piggies who built houses of straw and stick when they needed bricks to keep the wolf from blowing the fucker away.

New Orleans is fucked because there's poison everywhere. In the FEMA trailers (use of which extends far, far beyond New Orleans), the Sierra Club has found dangerous levels of formaldehyde in the air in the vast majority tested. And that's not to mention the fact that the the winds of tropical storms, not to mention hurricanes, will tear through the trailers with all the disproportionate force of a killer whale on a baby sea lion. And the earth itself in New Orleans is filled with a mixture of chemicals and toxins that'll one day have people there longing to breathe the air of Ground Zero in New York City.

It's awfully nice that Ray Nagin wants to have unity in the city, something that's a hell of a lot easier to do with half as many people in New Orleans as last year at this time. But New Orleans is fucked, between bearing the damage of long-term neglect (isn't it time someone realized that doing anything on the cheap, whether it's wars of choice or levees of life support, is just gonna end up fucking over the very people it's supposed to help?) and bearing up for another hurricane season, with a prediction for this year that's pretty much the exact same as last year. New Orleans, that sinful town, now bears the weight of the sins of national incompetence on environmental and urban policies, corporate cronyism, budget cuts and tax cuts, and more. It is a weight that will collapse the Crescent City without the will to put more than a cotton ball on an arterial wound.

5/19/2006

Mauling a Metaphor Like a Sloth Bear Mauls a Monkey:On Wednesday, the Rude Pundit asked for you to send you versions of the larger symbolic meaning of the story of the zoo in Amsterdam where a group of sloth bears chased, killed, and ate a macaque. And you responded with dozens of permutations of monkey, bears, and horrified onlookers. Here's some of the best (with minor editing so no one looks like too much of a fuckin' idiot for misplacing a comma or something):Moeman of Canada goes all bloggy on it: "Joe Klein is the monkey. We find Macaque Joe sitting on his political perch picking pieces of what's left of his overrated pundit career from his bug infested beard. Monkey Joe used to swiftly and anonymously jump from Democratic vine to Republican vine but his last leap didn't quite make it and he fell into the fever swamped left blogosphere. Despite his ear-splitting screeches, the hungry boy and girl bears easily shredded the little runt."

Mike Hawk writes: "The monkey is Hillary; the bears are the rabid right-wing pundits like Malkin, Coulter, etc. They have been relatively quiet, taking the occasional nip at her; but once Hillary officially climbs up that rickety Presidential Candidate structure, they will really show their instinctive viciousness, knock her down and rip her to fucking shreds. And the zoo visitors, who will just sit and stare and thank God that it's not them, that would be the rest of the nutless gutless Democratic Party."

Longtime Rude reader CAG says: "I kinda like to imagine the bears as Patrick Fitzgerald and his band of merry attorneys and the monkey to be Karl Rove, vulnerable after visiting the bears one too many times. Tired of lame monkey antics, the bears decide to free themselves of the crazy monkey and satiate their appetites as well. But rather than a fevered feeding frenzy, the bears prepare Rove a la gourmet, with proper time and attention paid to the process of devouring the evil cretin in a painstakingly slow and civilized manner. The onlookers would be the rest of the scandal ridden administration, watching in horror as the bears finally rip the veil off their revenge-filled, evil-tainted, incompetent excuse for a government with every measured bite of monkey."Flora and Tim (or one of them because it's so fucking sweet and trusting when two people share an e-mail address) go outside of DC to say: "The monkey’s the Dover, Pennsylvania School Board and the bears are voters, simultaneously proving that omnivorous ursine cave dwellers evolved from lower primates, or perhaps prehistoric ground sloths, into better equipped predators than mere macaque circus performers (or school board members) and that angry voters wakening from hibernation will bite your head off and eat you alive."Joe gives us this bleak version: "The liberals are the monkey. The right-wing zealots are the bears. The bears have worked themselves up into a rabid frenzy, they're hungry for blood, not the kind with the quickly pre-killed taste, but the kind which carries the strong scent of fear. The monkey stands back, laughing, thinking that the bears are about to maul the shit out of one-another. The monkey forgets he's stuck in the same cage as those crazy fuckers. He forgets that, though bears may seem nasty and vicious and brave, they usually only pick on animals weaker than them - like monkeys. The bears all get together and devour the monkey. A short time later, they shit all over the cage (America) and roll around in it."

Iris (from Germany?) comes up with the Rude Pundit's favorite: "In my story Mary Cheney is the monkey. The bears are the Republicans with whom she has been living cosily for years. One day the bears decide the monkey's book about her life with the bears and the bushes is going too far, so they eat her....she's used to it."

More than one person went with the Patrick Fitzgerald/Karl Rove analogy, like DanAnd on it went, from grimly pathetic to pathetically hopeful. Mat says the monkey is reproductive freedom and the bears are the pro-life movement; Jack says the monkey's a monkey and the bears are Dick Cheney out hunting; for Zeke, the monkey's Bush, the bears moderate Republicans. While not the most violent, the most disturbing is David G.'s take: for him, the monkey's Rush Limbaugh, the bears are a gay hippie who wants to fuck Limbaugh. And then it gets weird. David of North Carolina makes Tony Snow the monkey and the press the bears, with lots of blood and shit-tossing.

The Rude Pundit'll post more in the next couple of days. But, since everyone of us in Left Blogsylvania oughta have our token conservatives, let's leave you with Anthony from Texas:"The monkey is a monkey.The bear is a bear.The zoo is a zoo.The Democrats are in shock.The Republicans are wondering what PETA's reaction to all this is."

Day of the Little Bitches:Yesterday, was the day of the little bitches in Washington, DC. After puffing out their chests about how big and tough and indy-pend-ant they are, Republicans in the Senate retreated to their natural position, as little bitches, the kind of little bitch that, when scared, turns her back to you and raises her haunches in expectation of being treated like the little bitch that she is. To wit:

Arlen Specter Is a Little Bitch: Big, bad Arlen Specter can now proudly say that he voted for the marriage amendment before he voted against it. On Sunday gabfests, Specter was so vewy bwave, speaking about how he'll ask tough questions about spying during the confirmation debate over Michael Hayden, but yesterday, he hid the Judiciary Committee Hearing on a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage in a room where the public is not allowed, thus giving it all the importance of a closet blow job. Which pissed off Russ Feingold, who may be circumcised but has enormous balls. Feingold called out Specter on the bullshit hearing, Specter threw a hissy, Feingold walked out, and Specter said, "Good riddance." Then Specter, like a good leader, said he was voting for the amendment to get it out of committee, but that he'll vote against it in the full Senate. This morning, Specter's blow drying the wig he keeps of Thomas Jefferson's hair, putting on Benjamin Franklin's pants, and parading around, declaring, "I am a protector of the Constitution, yes, I am."Pat Roberts Is a Little Bitch:His opening statement to the Intelligence Committee on the nomination was like a riled up Elmer Fudd trying to figure out whether to shoot Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck. In an impassioned tirade, Roberts, being one of the best little bitches, sucked the adminstration's toes and took a brave stand against whistleblowing and the free press and for entrenched government secrecy because, in case you don't remember, "Al-Qaeda is at war with the United States. Terrorists are planning attacks as we speak." Oh, and by the way, "Remember Khobar Towers, Beirut, the USS Cole, the Embassy attacks, the two attacks on the World Trade Center and 9/11..."

Then Roberts spouted the good little bitch line that Karl Rove has tatooed with a rusty prison needle on the inner thigh of every Republican, "I am a strong supporter of civil liberties. But, you have no civil liberties if you are dead." Of course, one may ask why so many people put their lives on the line (and were killed) trying to get civil liberties in this nation if they can be so readily taken away. But, then again, if you question, you're asking for Osama Bin Laden to climb into your home and beat you to death with your your dog before jacking off on your burning American flag. Then, of course, Hayden and Roberts blinded the rest of the committee with the reflection of klieg lights off their shiny pates.

Yes, between Roberts and Specter, the passage of English as a the "official" language of the United States, and the raising of fines for broadcast "indecency" (which was passed by a procedural move in a nearly empty chamber where Sam "Little Bitch" Brownback railed at the airwaves around him), the Senate was in rare form, turning around for the nutzoid right and offering their glistening, willing anuses for reaming. Another proud day in American legislative history.

5/18/2006

The Religious Right Wants Meat (Updated):There's a reason that you have to kill a dog that's tasted human blood. Once it gets that taste in its palate, it becomes hungrier and hungrier for more of that chewy meat, that tangy blood, that human flesh. So there's precious few options. You can try to keep it locked away, deny it what it so deeply desires, hope it'll go back to being the nice little weimariner it always was. And you can believe it, and perhaps it would be true, that one day you'll have a happy chappy again. But that's a lie until it gets that scent of a cut, a nosebleed, a tampon. Then you learn, as we so often do, whether on the shores of Florida canals or in the sprawl of California exurbs, just where you really are on the food chain. You're better off just putting that fucker down. Don't believe it? Lock yourself in a room with a big dog without food for a few days. The only advice that'll help you is "Don't fall asleep."

Oh, how Karl Rove thought he had placated the beast of the religious right. How he thought that John Roberts and Samuel Alito would be all they needed to keep them loyally licking his hand, bringing him his slippers, all the while as he watched them gleefully jam their muzzles into the crotches of his enemies and rip their nutsacks off. Now, Rove has learned: once you feed it, it will want more.

See, while, sure, the religous right is pissed about Bush's "approach" to immigration, they can't make that the focus, because, you know, from the perspective of wackoid Jeeezus-lovin' PACs, you piss off the Hispanic community, you are pissing away mucho dinero. So, not only are they expressing disappointment with the immigration "plan" Bush wants, but they are extra-ultra-special pissed off about the lack of movement on (and, indeed, the possible loss of) the marriage amendment as an issue.

The Family Research Council's Tony "Ironically the Same Name as a Gay Actor Who Died of AIDS" Perkins said on the Today Show yesterday about the White House, "They've got to follow through on promises that were made in the 2004 election cycle, which so far they have not done very much in that area." Yes, you might think a pair of Dobson-approved Supreme Court justices would be more than enough, but when Churchy wanna get paid, you better pay Churchy large or Churchy's gonna break you knees, motherfucker. That's what Perkins said to Bill O'Reilly yesterday over on Fox "News" regarding the President: "I think there's a great risk to him and to the Republican Party if they do not advance these issues that were central to the 2004 campaign. It motivated the value voters, marriage being chief among them." Or, in other words, Churchy's gonna whack the shit out of you with a big ol' Bible.

The Family Research Council (motto: "Making sure you forget that Jesus gave a shit about the poor and weak") and Perkins, in his Washington Update, said about Bush's immigration speech: "I should also point out that the President has not given a prime-time address on the marriage amendment. It's not that we are demanding this, but when the First Lady is disparaging the issue and when the Vice President lets stand unrebutted Mary Cheney's claims, we think some demonstration of Presidential leadership is warranted--and overdue." And that's why Tony Perkins received an honorary doctorate from Jerry Falwell at the same commencement where John McCain spoke.

As Americablog pointed out, the Christian press turned viscerally on Laura Bush for saying (what she was told to say) that the gay marriage amendment ought not be a campaign issue. Leaving aside that, really, and c'mon, Laura Bush's thoughts on anything carry as much weight as flea shit, the ol' Agape Press quoted the Pennsylvania American Family Association's Diane Gramley: "[P]oliticians should stand up for marriage and should support the marriage amendments and voice their support for the marriage amendments during this campaign." On the AFAP's own website, Gramley goes on a bit more frothily, "The federal Marriage Protection Amendment is not discriminatory. Our proposed Pennsylvania Marriage Protection Amendment is not discriminatory. People want to protect traditional marriage and any individual running for public office would be well-advised to make marriage amendments a campaign issue." It's a little like saying that placing the military at the border is not militarization or that fucking a passed out sorority girl isn't rape. Just 'cause you say it...

Some things happen at a velocity that leaves you breathless. The woodpecker tapping away on that bug-filled branch. The way storms grow out of nowhere over Kansas sunflower fields. Elevator sex with Helen Thomas at the Watergate on a misty August night in 1986. And now the rapid descent into mutually assured destruction going on within the right wing. As the crazed religious right ironically eats its own tail over the marriage amendment, it's being attacked by the crazed secular right, like George Will. Karl Rove's gotta be lookin' around at all the wreckage being lain by the unchained beast and thinking, "Oh, shit."

It's so much fuckin' fun, it's hard to know who's the monkey and who's the bears. (Keep sending in those analogies, though. The best'll be posted tomorrow.)Update: And meat they shall get.

5/17/2006

Five Ways To Use the "Bears Eat Monkey" Story as a Metaphor:Some days, you've just gotta sit back on your sofa and softly whistle in appreciation when nature offers us a metaphor of such depth, breadth, and outright hilarity. To wit: At a zoo in Amsterdam yesterday, a group of sloth bears chased down a macaque, a vaguely baboonish monkey. The bears and the monkeys lived in the same area of the zoo. The monkey ran onto a wooden frame that one supposes the monkey used in charmingly buffoonish monkey play. One ambitious sloth bear shook the structure and, when that failed, just climbed on up, grabbed the cute little monkey in its teeth, killed it, and dragged it back to the bear cave where the monkey was eaten by three sloth bears. Who then made a rug out of its fur. No, not really, but the whole thing happened in front of horrified zoo goers, who, one can assume, were not horrified enough to walk away, even as monkey head was torn from monkey body because, you know, the monkey brains are the best part.

There's so many ways we can pick up this little parable of the ongoing wars between monkeys and bears, which go back millenia (the Rude Pundit can say this: if history teaches us anything, there's gonna be hell to pay among the sloth bear population of the Netherlands once the mandrills get word of this). So let's run with this fucker for a while. Whither bears? Whother monkey? Howther mauling?

Let's try this one: George Bush is the macaque. The bears aligned against him are the poll numbers. The attempted escape is Bush's little (very little) immigration speech Monday night. You see where this is going: he ain't gettin' away. The poll numbers have got him in their teeth, shaking him limp, taking him back to the cave, which, hey, could be the midterm elections, to eat him up. Yum, yum, good. Oh, and the people watching aghast who are mesmerized by the violence they can do nothing to stop? That'd be Republicans in Congress.

So, like, now what if we say the Constitution is the monkey. Then the bears would have to be the White House and the Republicans in Congress (and Joe Lieberman), gleefully dining on it, tearing it limb from limb, article from amendment. Hell, in this version, the bears would fuck the monkey's corpse, defiling it with their barbed bear dicks. So then, like, we're all the ones watching on the sidelines, simply thinking, "Damn, glad there's this fence here so we don't get raped and eaten by bears. How strong's this thing, anyway?"

Or, wait, wait, how about this one: the American public is the monkey. And, like, the media's the bears, and the cave is our living room, where, every night, we're mauled and torn apart by the likes of Brit Hume and Chris Matthews. Shit, the Dutch zoo monkey was eaten in its own home. It was just a damn shame that the zoo had let the bears live there, too.

Still, you could go with Arlen Specter as the monkey, or any Republican Senator who pretends that he or she's gonna take a big ol' brave stand against the White House, the bears. Then it's just kinda sad to watch the monkey turned into a pile of bloody fur on the cave floor, but it ain't unexpected. What chance did a monkey have against the bears?

And, one more: the monkey's the Republican party. The bears are the rabid right wingers who have made their bed with the Republicans, only to see those goddamn monkeys shit where the bears sleep again and again. And finally the bears are sick and tired of trying to live with the monkeys. It's time for some ursine payback. Time to show just how much the bears shouldn't be fucked with. Outside the fence is all of us, nodding, thinking, Stupid fuckin' zookeepers should've known better than to mix monkeys and bears. And that little boy who's pointing and laughing at the stupid monkey? That'd be the Rude Pundit.

What fun, huh? Come up with your own use of the metaphor. E-mail it on over. Later this week, the Rude Pundit'll post the best couple of 'em.

5/16/2006

Border Control Advocates Have No Amigo In El Presidente:Fat fuckin' Minutemen, frothin' furious Lou Dobbs, and House Republicans need to know: when it comes to the border with Mexico, George W. Bush has always been a pussy. When he ran for Governor in Texas, he would barely engage with the issue of illegal immigration, other than to say that Ann Richards' actions were only "to make the President look good." While Governor, as Elisabeth Bumiller says in her scrotum-scrubber of an article in today's New York Times, "There were no major battles over immigration or immigration legislation when Mr. Bush was governor."

Of course, Bumiller leaves out the little incident where Marines shot and killed an Hispanic-American teenager, Texan Esequiel Hernandez, Jr., while on border patrol for drug runners. He was tending goats, and, as ever when goats are involved, George W. Bush was inactive. According to the May 24, 1997 Houston Chronicle, "In Austin, Gov.George W. Bush, after reading newspaper accounts of the shooting, termed Hernandez's death a 'terrible tragedy,' said spokeswoman Karen Hughes. But Hughes said the governor had not been briefed on the incident and was not going to issue a public statement." But that was par for the course for Bush on immigration. You can't alienate that voting bloc. And anything you do, at all, will send them scurrying around like, well, jumping beans, in a fury.

'Cause, you see, George W. Bush loves him some immigrants, says Bumiller in her slow, lubricious cock-sucking of an article: "Mr. Bush first met Mexican immigrants at public school in Midland, Tex., where Hispanics made up 25 percent of the population. Later, when he owned a small, unsuccessful oil company, he employed Mexican immigrants in the fields. When he was the managing partner of the Texas Rangers, he reveled in going into the dugout and joking with the players, many of them Hispanic, in fractured Spanglish." So, wait: you mean Bush knew Mexican immigrants in third grade? And he hired Mexicans to do the shit jobs? And he tried to act cool with the tough ball players? In Texas? How's that possible? Fuck, did he put on a sombrero and serape and saunter onto the streets of Laredo to declare, "Misión lograda" on border control?

So last night, Bush promised not to militarize the border by sending the military to "assist" the Border Patrol. Gonna leave those guns behind, right? He made the same kind of promise about the Border Patrol and National Guard as he made about the Iraqi forces and U.S. military: as one stands up, the other will stand down. "[T]he number of Guard forces will be reduced as new Border Patrol agents and new technologies come online," Bush said, and that's worked out so well in Iraq.

He promised to enslave a large number of immigrants in demeaning, low-wage jobs, using them up for a few years before tossing them back to their countries of origin. Call it the "Used Condom Approach" to illegal immigration, or, if you must, a "Temporary Worker Program." Said Bush, "This program would match willing foreign workers with willing American employers for jobs Americans are not doing...A temporary worker program would meet the needs of our economy," meaning cheap chicken choppers for Tyson, with no hope of anything like union protections or unemployment or job security or health insurance or any of those little things. Everyone wins. Except, you know, most people.

As ever in a Bush speech, there was the weirdo, scary science fiction-y proposal. This time it was the use of "biometric technology" to track legal immgrants: "A key part of that system should be a new identification card for every legal foreign worker. This card should use biometric technology, such as digital fingerprints, to make it tamper-proof." Even easier, of course, would be snapping an ear tag on 'em.

It was a fairly useless speech, since the proudly nutzoid House Republicans (motto: "Look at our big piles of shit! Look at them!") aren't gonna budge, and Bill Frist is just a punk-ass little bitch on everything. And, ultimately, all Bush did was promise to move his toy soldiers some more, cross his fingers, and hope for the best. Watching the President is a little like watching the last marathon runner at the Special Olympics. Gosh and darn, you want the limping fella to make it to the finish line, but mostly we just want him to give up so we can go hom and get on with our lives.

5/15/2006

Hand Over Your Phone Records For the Good of America:Here's what the Rude Pundit wants to see: he wants Republican Senators Bill Frist, Jon Kyl, Jeff Sessions and more to have a press conference, big fuckin' press conference, with your CNNMSNBCFox in attendance, and he wants to see those sour-faced white men hold up some papers. Yeah, the Rude Pundit wants Bill Frist to announce, "These are our phone records for our home phones, our office phones, and our cell phones, personal and business. They contain every phone number called from those phones. We are handing them over, personally, to the White House, and we trust this administration to use these records fairly, with no fear of misuse now or in the future."

Then John Negroponte'll come out and Frist, Hastert, Kyl, Sessions, and others'll bow down and offer the papers to him as a tribute, a tithing, an oath of fealty, if you will. Negroponte, who looks like some unholy love child of Col. Klink and Robert Morley, will accept the phone records in the name of the nation and the President, and hand them off to Michael Hayden before asking, "Now, which one of you is gonna suck my herpes-ridden cock and which one is gonna lick my hemhorroidal ass?" for, indeed, true evil is diseased. At which point, the cameras will be turned off as Negroponte gives the Republican congressional leadership a bit of the Salvadoran nun treatment. Another proud moment for America.

The goddamnedest pathetic and funny sight this weekend was watching Republicans proudly state that they could give a shit less if an unchecked, secretive White House, at will, with no law or oversight, collected the phone records of millions of Americans so that they can justify the budget of the intelligence services for another Osama-less fiscal year. See, without offering any kind of tangible result from the program, we are supposed to believe that all the NSA is doing is looking for call patterns that'll prevent, oh, let's say, the ubiquitous dirty bomb from blowing up, because, you know, terrorists who are smart enough to acquire nuclear material and create that kind of weapon are too stupid to suspect they might oughta be careful about who they call. (Actually, that should be the mantra of many of these spying programs: "The NSA: We're Going After the Dumb Ones.")

Last week, Jon Kyl blew a gasket, declaring, "This is nuts" that we'd even dare to question the program, that it had been "leaked" to the press. Jeff Sessions ironically began, "Let's talk about this in a rational way" before screeching, "We are in a war with terrorism. There are people out there who want to kill us." But, hey, at least he's talkin' rationally. Then there were the Sunday news gabfests.

Over on CNN's Late Edition with Wolf "Behold My Regally Lupine Stubble" Blitzer, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley declared that he could not "confirm or deny the claims in the USA Today story." Which someone should have told Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, since one presumes he revealed classified information when he told Blitzer not an hour later, "I am one of the people who are briefed...I've known about the program." Frist then went on to say he's not only "comfortable" with it, but he's damn proud of it: "I am absolutely convinced that you, your family, our families are safer because of this particular program." Then he made this tortured claim: "And, as you know, the program is voluntary, the participants in that program." He's referring, of course, to the phone companies themselves, not to each individual American, most of whom would like to assume that, absent a warrant, they would not be monitored in any way by their government.

For Newt Gingrich, the problem ain't the program - oh, no, all those happy bloggy headlines about Gingrich seemingly opposing the administration, they were full of shit. As Newt told Tim "Behold My Engorged Cranium of Truth" Russert on Meet the Press, the problem's the spin, not the spying. When Russert reminded Gingrich that he had said that defending the program is "defending the indefensible," Gingrich put the smack down on that liberal talk: "Because they refuse to come out front and talk about it. As long as this stuff leaks out and then they’re on defense, then you get these kind of absurd magazine covers and then you’re going to have Senator Specter saying he’s going to threaten American companies." Then he frothed and declared that Americans want to be spied on to prevent another terrorist attack, and everyone should just shut the fuck up and trust the executive branch: "Nobody who’s not involved in terrorism should be at risk. Nobody who’s making normal phone calls should be at risk." After which, Gingrich got into a strange gargantuan head-butting contest with Russert, screaming, "I have the larger lobe, me, Newt Gingrich, fucker."

So, c'mon, Newt, and all good and loyal citizens: don't wait for your phone company. Hand over your call records to the National Security Agency. You heard Bill Frist: it's voluntary. You may ask why you should bother, since you are not a terrorist. But, really, that's not for you to decide, now, is it?

5/12/2006

A Brief Message To the NSA, Re: The Rude Pundit's Phone Records:The Rude Pundit would like to tell the National Security Agency that all those calls he made to "Burqa Babes" and "Muslim She-Males With Big Tits and Big Dicks" were not for research or to support terrorism. They were for masturbation.

If you should contact them, tell Maisa the Rude Pundit sends her/him lots of love and lotion.

The Impeachment Campaign, Part 3: Practical Impeachment Politics (Step Two: Implied Impeachment):This week, in a series that's lasted two or three days longer than originally intended, the Rude Pundit has been exploring how to approach the notion of impeaching George W. Bush as a legitimate issue in this year's midterm Congressional elections (popularly known as "Wait, Didn't We Just Elect Joe/Joanie Blow To the House of Representatives?"). In Part 1, the whole problem was put forth as an analogy of an individual woman fucking an individual guy from Italy. In Part 2, the Rude Pundit proposed, impractically, but dreamily, that Democrats make the national Congressional campaign about impeaching Bush - you wanna get rid of Bush? Vote Democratic. Yesterday, the Rude Pundit offered direct rhetorical advice on how to drag individual Republicans down by tying them to Bush. No, it wasn't Lakoff-ian or even Luntz-esque, but, you know, it sure would kick some ass.

Let's bring this home: any reasonably well-informed beagle knows that if Democrats win the House and Senate, there's a better than 50-50 chance for Bush's impeachment and removal from office. The kicker, the thing that's got Karl Rove shitting blood as much as his impending indictment, is that the public wants Bush gone, his Administration buried, and a chance to take a group piss on the mass grave that'll be left behind. And Republicans have no one to blame but themselves for the public's willingness to accept the rarity and severity of impeachment.

'Cause, and let's get this straight, Republicans made sure that we moved into a fucked-up Never-Neverland of political gamesmanship, creating brave new worlds of bullshit power plays guaranteed to appeal to the basest of the base and alienate the majority of the nation in disgust. In recent history, the major invocations of impeachment prior to Bill Clinton were based on very real, nation-damaging crimes: Nixon's cover-up and abuses of power (by the way, read the Articles of Impeachment against Nixon - pussy stuff compared to what could be brought against Bush) and Ronald Reagan for the Iran-Contra debacle (of course, Reagan had descended into Alzheimer's dementia and was, for all intents and purposes, a pull-string talking Cabbage Patch Kid by the time impeachment was discussed).

In 1998, Republicans rammed through Articles of Impeachment against Bill Clinton, which, no matter what way you read it, say, "He lied about the fucking and tried to get others to lie about the fucking," thus dragging the nation into the right wing's bizarro fixation on the ways in which cocks and cunts are used. What they did also was to throw the whole national equilibrium off, turning the federal government into a chaotic zone where anything and everything is possible.

If you've ever been on a really long, good acid trip, you know of what the Rude Pundit speaks: sure, sure, when you first disappear into your own head, your own repressed shit and memories of shit, when it first comes at you as images and shifting colors and perceptions, you're fucked up by it: why the fuck are flowers coming out of the stereo speakers? Why is Jesus jacking off on a nun? Why's the nun a sheep? And if she's a sheep, how do you know she's a nun? But soon, you realize that the logic of the whole thing is non-logic, that you simply are existing in chaos, trippin' balls, and you accept that your girlfriend's vagina will talk to you and that the TV is your dearest friend and your worst enemy.

So the United States is dragged through the Clinton impeachment, eye-rolling the whole time, like children embarassed by how square their parents are. But Republicans aren't done, by any stretch, in fucking with the fabric of reality. We get to 2000 and all of a sudden we have frat boy riots trying to stop ballot counting, the sight of Republicans acting like they're a bunch of male chimps with hard-ons trying to fuck the last female chimp in heat, as if the country could crumble into a pile of shit and rubble if we waited a month or two to see who was really President. And, again, the public is watching all of this, aghast, wondering when it all became like tequila night at the Southern Ladies Book Club meeting. Republicans created a nation where anything can happen and let disorder rule the land. For the most part, they've made that insanity work to their benefit. Until now.

In other words, to bottom line this fucker, anyone who thinks that the general public gives two shits if the nation is "dragged" into impeachment hearings and trials has had some big-time blinders on. Chaos is the law of the land, motherfuckers. Democrats ought to embrace its possibilities and effects, and promise to throw the nation into political turmoil.

Why wait for the next presidential election? Against a grave and growing threat, shouldn't we be taking pre-emptive action?

5/11/2006

The Impeachment Campaign, Part 3: Practical Impeachment Politics (Step One: The Cangue):In China, in days long ago, for relatively minor offenses, the punishment could be an awful torture device called the cangue. The cangue was a simple enough instrument, as the best implements of pain and degradation are: it was a type of stocks, a piece of wood with a hole for the head. Except, and here's the extra-cool-cruel part, unlike many Western versions, there were no holes for the hands. Instead, the piece of wood itself was wide enough that one could not reach one's mouth, so you couldn't eat or drink without the kindness of others. Oh, and here's an extra dandy part: depending on your crime, you could have weights hung from your cangue. Christ, what chafing, what neck strain, what symbolism. For, indeed, as long as that cangue was destroying your spine, you would remember, yes, how you would remember, your crimes.

What Democrats need to get their minds around is the cangue that George Bush has become for the Republicans. And it is up to Democrats running for Congress to keep adding more and more weight to those cumbersome boards until they actually crush the wearers. It is a kind of impeachment by proxy: the implication of impeachment without the act, a prelude, if you will, for the possibility of impeachment. And, as in so many ways, the Republicans have created the perfect rhetorical path for Democrats.

When some spittle-spewing conservative buttboy (or girl) appears on TV to decry any flea turd's difference between what Democrats believe and the administration line that said buttboy (or girl) takes as greedily as a fat feather queen takes any random cock, said buttboy (or girl) refers to the "Kennedy wing" or the "Clinton wing"(Hillary, not Bill) or the "Kennedy/Clinton wing" of the Democratic Party to tarnish anyone who would believe such heresy. Bill O'Reilly (who really needs to be sodomized with a microphone) does so constantly, as in this from January 13, 2005, over Democrats who would dare believe that Social Security was not in trouble: "Can politicians from the Kennedy wing of the 'progressive' left win over majority of American voters?"

For Democratic Congressional candidates, it's simple enough. (And if they're not doing the following already, they are missing out on a golden opportunity.) Choose any random Democrat running against a Republican. Let's say Lois Murphy, running against incumbent Republican Jim Gerlach in Pennsylvania's Sixth Districh. Gerlach has got his Bush-cangue already, so in every ad that Murphy runs, every appearance that Murphy makes, she should make sure to mention how much Gerlach is beholden to Bush and Cheney. Hell, she should makes sure that she always says, "Jim Gerlach and George Bush believe..." And fill in the blank. That's the weight, man. Hell, with Gerlach and other House members, there's the added weight of Tom DeLay: "What Jim Gerlach, George Bush, and Tom DeLay did..." And who the fuck's gonna vote for him? Someone who actually still supports Bush and DeLay? That's gettin' to be precious, precious few people, and we'd call them "bugfuck insane."

The guilt-by-association rhetorical device is specious and overused, except when it's true. And with a President and party so hated by nearly the entire nation, when the only "victory" that Bush is said to be "celebrating" is more tax cuts for the very wealthy, well, it's time to move in for the rhetorical kill, and that's to use Bush against his party. Again, as the Rude Pundit said yesterday, the idea is to force Republican candidates to choose between supporting Bush or denying him, and either way there's a bear trap waiting to chomp down.

Democrats need to bathe in the streams of blood pouring from the wounded administration and the hemhorraging Republican Party. They need to celebrate like ancient rites would have them, eating the hearts of their enemies to make them stronger. So when, for instance, Hillary Clinton is asked to say something nice about Bush, she shouldn't respond that he's one charming motherfucking pig or some such shit. No, she should say, "His heart was tasty. His blood was warmer than I thought it would be."

5/10/2006

The Impeachment Campaign, Part 2: Impractical Impeachment Politics:Karl Rove is one of the great bluffers in the history of Machiavellian manipulation. He's the type of man who'll try to convince you how much you don't want the last slice of pizza on the tray, how it'll make you fat, how you'll be tired for the rest of the night, how you might stain your nice white shirt. You'll get to the point where you not only don't want the slice of pizza, you start to tell others how much you never really wanted that slice in the first place, while, in the background, Karl Rove is scarfin' that cheesy bad boy down. Right now, Rove is on a mission to make sure that no one wants to touch the pepperoni-studded piece of impeachment.

After avoiding the "I" word for the better part of the presidency of George W. Bush, suddenly, politicians and the media are talking about "impeachment" with startling frequency. Except, of course, it's Republicans who are talking about it, as in, "If Democrats win the House, they're gonna impeach the President" before blathering on about how the public doesn't want that. And the conservative media can't get enough of trying to get Democrats to say that, if they win, they'll immediately impeach Bush.

On This Week With George Stephanopoulos's Hair, Howard Dean, responding to an accusation by Ken "Howard Dean's Kinda Cute" Mehlman, said that the Democrats had no plans to impeach Bush. Nancy Pelosi, on Meet Tim Russert's Head, promised investigations, but not necessarily impeachment, which conservatives immediately took to mean "impeachment." And even putatively leftish John Dickerson, in Slate, wrote that Pelosi's promise of investigations was a "gift" to Republicans.

The problem isn't that Republicans are trying to turn the "threat" of impeachment into the big bugaboo of the midterm elections. That's just more politics of fear - this year's Zarqawi - and it won't work. Because a good third to a half of the people who voted for Bush in 2004 think it was a mistake, wish they could take it back, cut off their screen-pushin' fingers, take a mulligan, a do-over, fuck, something to make it not real anymore. Despite the desperate, annoying squawking of the right to the contrary, the mainstream media is not responsible for the plunging poll numbers of the President, since, by and large, the MSM still lovingly gets on its knees to get the high hard one from the White House. And then there's the half the population who think Bush shouldn't be there in the first place. To think that there's some kind of mass belief in the American people that the nation needs to be led by George W. Bush for the next two and a half years is to seriously mis-read the mood of the country.

So here's the Rude Pundit's reckless, unresearched, completely biased, crazy-ass, but, holy shit, strangely logical proposition: Democrats need to embrace the politics of impeachment and make it a centerpiece of their national Congressional campaign. It's so simple: "If you don't want George W. Bush and Dick Cheney to be our leaders anymore, vote for Democrats."

Goddamn, isn't that breathtakingly direct? It makes Republicans have to either run scared or respond with something along the lines of "I don't want them impeached because I believe in the jobs that Bush and Cheney are doing," which, you know, almost two-thirds of the nation doesn't believe. Hell, at this point, more people disapprove of Bush and his administration than oppose gay marriage.

The Republican National Committee is scared shitless of this tactic, as indicated by Karl Rove's attention to it, as well as by the RNC's "hominah, hominah" responses to Pelosi and Dean. So what the right is trying to do is make "impeachment" into a bad word, as if somehow bad things might happen to the nation if Bush is impeached, like, say, we'd be dragged into a war of choice based on lies or dead black people would float through the streets of our major cities.

Yes, so far, polls have not reached the 50% tipping point on support of impeachment, although those polls were focused on the more narrow question of illegal wiretapping as a reason for impeachment. But the public hasn't been fully introduced to the idea of a Bush-less future, even sooner than the beginning of 2009. The Rude Pundit guarantees that if put in those terms, "An America Without George W. Bush or Dick Cheney Leading," to average Americans, the thought will make clouds part, sunshine warm faces, and a great weight lifted off chests. You wanna see people react with dancing in the streets and flowers and candies tossed out of windows? Let Americans know that the occupation of their own nation can end.

Note: The Rude Pundit would like to see, say, Dick Gephardt run for his House seat again, followed by his election to Speaker of the House, which would make him next in line for the Presidency after Bush and Cheney are forced into exile. The Pelosi-factor would be a stumbling block. But, really, at this point, a reasonably well-trained monkey or a deviled ham sandwich could do a better job in the Oval Office.

Tomorrow: Let's take that pie out of the sky and talk about Practical Impeachment Politics.

Yesterday: Part 1 - A fine analogy about swarthy Europeans and hot sex.

5/09/2006

The Impeachment Campaign - Part 1: The Analogy:Let us say, and why not, that you are a young American woman who is traveling in Europe by yourself for the summer. It's a magical time, and along with the usual Spanish sightseeing, German mountain climbing, Romanian orphan feeding, and Amsterdam hookah smoking, you indulge in flirtations and affairs. You're single, strong, smart, self-assured, and so you feel free to tempt the extra-swarthy Portugese fisherman at a pub, you let that Czech goth guy go down on you with his pierced tongue, you fleetingly, furtively fuck the French film student in your apartment overlooking a curved, brick street (oh, how Godard would approve, you think), and you find yourself falling in love with Giorgio, the manly Italian man who you met staring at pietas big and small in Florence.

Giorgio shows you places in Sienna and Perugia that only seasoned tourists and locals see. At nights, after dancing and downing bottles of Sangiovese Grosso, you and Giorgio disappear into your room in the small villas or farmhouses you favor and Giorgio not only knows exactly where your g-spot is, but he's damn good at discovering the rest of the alphabet - he is the Columbus of your body and he has colonized it. Giorgio gives and gives, and so it's only with the mildest trepidation that you say, "Yes" when he asks if he can visit you in the United States at your place in, let's say, Washington, D.C.

Giorgio is planning to stay for a full month. And when Giorgio first arrives, it is everything you could have hoped for. That first week, you show him the cathedrals of American democracy, you hold each other and cry at the Holocaust Museum, and you people watch in the Adams-Morgan. You give him maps and directions because, indeed, you have to return to work, holidays can't last forever. And at some point that week, you realize that Giorgio isn't all that. He's kind of lazy. He eats too much (although, goddamn his metabolism, he doesn't gain an ounce). He doesn't take you out for thank you dinners. And he expects you to blow him more than he wants to fuck you. He's making a mess of your Georgetown apartment. He wants to use your car, explore places further and further away, gets bitchy if you refuse him, won't wipe his piss spatters from the toilet, alienates your friends because he simply sits, sullen at restaurants because he can't smoke while he's drinking, thinks everyone is a phony or a jerk. When you confront Giorgio, he denies he's any different, that you're just uptight 'cause you're not on vacation anymore, accuses you of abandoning him. It hits you: Giorgio's kind of an asshole. He should have been treated like all that pot you bought in Amsterdam but left when you were heading to the next country because it wasn't worth the trouble.

And you're left with a choice: you can let Giorgio stay for the next couple of weeks, tough it out, be miserable, distance yourself from him, and hope it's just over with before he does any real damage. Or you can throw that wad of fuck out with directions to the Italian consulate and tell him that he's such a piece of shit that his own people won't even want him. The former choice seems the easiest - time passes quickly and, really, it couldn't get any worse. But it's also soul-sapping and degrading, and it'll leave you feeling like a doormat, significantly less strong, smart, and self-assured than you were before. Some of your friends and co-workers tell you to go that route because the other choice might end up creating more chaos. The latter choice requires an enormous amount of will, with the potential blow-ups, threats, calls to the police, and bizarre hand gestures of condemnation. But if you go that route, it's over. That miserable bastard is out and you can straighten your shit out and get on with your life. It's what you really want, no matter how incautious it may seem, because the other choice is a pathway to a slow inner death.

When Democrats scramble around, pledging that they'll investigate President Bush but not impeach him, should they be in the majority in one or both houses of Congress, they are promising weakness masked as strength. Instead, Democrats should make impeachment the center of the Congressional campaign because that's what the American people want.

5/08/2006

Michael Hayden: Yet Another Motherfucker For America:If it's time for President Bush to nominate someone for a position, it's time to hide our mothers. For, indeed, if there is one thing that is actually steady and true in the topsy-turvy landscape of the raped and desecrated body politic, it is that George Bush will select a motherfucker for the open slot. In fact, Bush will actually pass over pigfuckers, dogfuckers, babyfuckers, and corpsefuckers just to make sure that he has picked the right kind of fucker for the job: a motherfucker. So far, we've been treated to a regular carnival parade of motherfuckers.

Hell, you could make a list of just the motherfuckers named "John" in the Bush Administration: from John Ashcroft, who wept and beat himself bloody with a bullwhip made of dried aborted fetuses every time he fucked a mother, to John Bolton, who shits on Kofi Annan's desk while fucking ambassadors' mothers, to John Negroponte, who keeps jars of the eyeballs of Salvadoran village children killed by death squads in the 1980s to stare at him while he fucks their aging mothers, to John Roberts, who tries not to think about fucking fathers while fucking mothers because he wants everyone to think he's a motherfucker just like them.

The resignation of CIA Director Porter "Motherfucker" Goss is enmeshed in the mystery of a power struggle with John "the Aforementioned Motherfucker" Negroponte, wrapped in Duke Cunningham's bribery scandal - now featuring Goss's third in command, "Dusty" Foggo, covered in a sticky secret sauce that might just be spook and legislator spooge, involving a nine-fingered CIA agent with the easy-to-remember nickname of "Nine Fingers," hookers, and poker (or maybe, more appropriately, "poke-him" parties). Considering how sleazy, cynical, and contemptuous of the nation the whole thing seems, the Rude Pundit wouldn't be surprised to learn that Nine Fingers lost his tenth digit in the particularly tight anus of a Shanghai prostitute. As far as potential scandals go, the whole thing is sweet-smelling enough to make you salivate like sniffin' Granny's boysenberry pies on a window sill.

So now Bush gets to nominate a new Director of Central Intelligence, and he chooses Gen. Michael Hayden, one more motherfucker for the round table of motherfuckers. The quick rogue's gallery portrait features Hayden, as head of the NSA (a job that makes one a motherfucker by definition), carrying out and defending warrantless spying on Americans, missing little things like 9/11, and, in a precious moment, chastising a reporter for saying that the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution says that "probable cause" must be involved in securing a warrant for search, which it does, which Hayden denied it did, which, you know, explains a fuck of a lot. (By the way, what is it with Republicans only paying attention to parts of the Amendments, like the whole "well-regulated militia" thing in the Second Amendment? No wonder they're such bad fucks that they require hookers to get them off - good fucking requires nuance and attention to the full act, not dull head banging.)

Of course, back in 2000, in a hearing before a Clinton-hatin' House Committee on Intelligence, Hayden was all about the Fourth Amendment and the FISA court because the House Republicans were savagely angry at not getting Clinton out of office and sought to castrate him any way they could, which led to, horror of horrors, oversight and calls for accountability. Said Hayden: "Under FISA, NSA may only target communications of a U.S. person in the United States if a federal judge finds probable cause to believe that the U.S. person is an agent of a foreign power. Probable cause exists when facts and circumstances within the applicant's knowledge and of which he/she has reasonably trustworthy information are sufficient to warrant a person of reasonable caution to believe that the proposed target of the surveillance is an agent of a foreign power. Under the statute, a judge may determine a U.S. person to be an agent of a foreign power only if there is information to support a finding that the individual is a spy, terrorist, saboteur, or someone who aids or abets them." And, if that was tossed back at him today, Hayden, being a good motherfucker, would say the White House line of "We're at war, blah, blah, blah."

This morning, National Security Adviser Stephen "Yep, He's a Motherfucker" Hadley was on CNN calling Hayden "an independent thinker. He has been not -- has not been shy about expressing his views." Yet Hadley contradicted himself not a moment later when he said, "[Hayden] will view himself rightly as working very closely with Ambassador Negroponte to carry out the President's agenda." A few minutes before, on Fox "News," Hadley was even more blatant: "He's committed to the President's agenda." Shouldn't the Director of Central Intelligence be committed to getting the right intelligence, no matter what the agenda? For if one is committed to an agenda, then one will make the "facts" suit the agenda, and who knows what could happen if the CIA did that. We might go to war based on a false premise that intelligence was manipulated to prove...oh, shit, right.

Back in April 1997, when George Tenet was having his confirmation hearing to be DCI, Republican Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma said this about the position: "I think we all agree of the necessity of total objectivity, total independence from either a personal political philosophy or pressures that could be applied by any number of people whether they be in Congress or the White House or others...And this objectivity would mean, as you have -- others have asked you, it would mean delivering bad news as well as some good news. It would mean delivering the truth to this committee, the Senate Armed Services Committee or any other committee, in spite of the fact that that might totally contradict something that has been said by the administration or by the president of the United States. Would you be willing to do that?" Of course, Tenet said he would, as anyone would say while sitting in that chair.

Maybe that's why having a military man in the DCI position is such a bad idea. As we've learned, until they retire, they serve their masters Bush, Rumsfeld, and Cheney, not the people, not the truth.

(Oh, and the Rude Pundit ain't naive about the evil that the CIA has done, is doing, and will do. But at least administrations usually try to hide it a little more.)